Eric Heinze - "Coming Clean"

Eric Heinze will discuss Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op.

RSVP Here (Please note your RSVP is requested but not required)

About the book: Leftists have long taught that people in the West must take responsibility for centuries of classism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and other gross injustices. Of course, right-wingers constantly ridicule this claim for its “wokeness.”

In Coming Clean, Eric Heinze rejects the idea that we should be less woke. In fact, we need more wokeness, but of a new kind. Yes, we must teach about these bleak pasts, but we must also educate the public about the left's own support for regimes that damaged and destroyed millions of lives for over a century—Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, or the Kim dynasty in North Korea.

Criticisms of Western wrongdoing are certainly important, yet Heinze explains that leftists have rarely engaged in the kinds of open and public self-scrutiny that they demand from others. Citing examples as different as the Ukraine war, LGBTQ+ people in Cuba, the concept of “hatred,” and the problem of leftwing antisemitism, Heinze explains why and how the left must change its memory politics if it is to claim any ethical high ground. 

About the author: Eric Heinze is the author of The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything (MIT Press) among other books. A Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, he has published over 100 articles and has been featured in radio and television and other media around the world. Heinze is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has held major research fellowships including Fulbright (US), DAAD (Germany), Chateaubriand (France), and HERA (EU).Eric Heinze is the author of The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything (MIT Press) among other books. A Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, he has published over 100 articles and has been featured in radio and television and other media around the world. Heinze is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has held major research fellowships including Fulbright (US), DAAD (Germany), Chateaubriand (France), and HERA (EU).